Warrior Conflict: Norse War-Lord versus Samurai Daimyo.

Author's Note:  I'm going to set a release schedule for matches for now on.  The first Warrior Bio will go live on Fridays, the second Bio on Sundays, and the Warrior Conflict on Tuesdays/Wednesdays (whenever I get time).  Hopefully this will make things a little more regular around here.  Anyway - you can find the relevant Warrior Bios for both the Norse and the Samurai before reading this Conflict by following the links in each of their names in this sentence.

 

The Scenario.

Uthred drummed his fingers on the tall prow of his ship, the Sea-Eagle.  Ralla, his new shipmaster following the last one's sudden death, was a capable man with a steady hand.  He was a natural-born leader, but knew where his post was and where his gold came from.  There were forty of his household soldiers, his huscarls, either sleeping, watching, waiting, or rowing from the flanks on either side of the ship.

They had set sail nearly a week before in their wolf-headed war-ship, Uthred at the helm and every man dressed to kill.  Rumors of strange ships and stranger men abroad on the cold seas had filtered in, and they had been enough for Uthred to take down his father's war-horn and his own sword from their places in his hall and declare that he was to go a-viking in search of these newcomers.

They had caught one fishing vessel that had been too curious for its own good, and sighted half of a dozen more.  It was a light ship with only a few men aboard, who had realized their plight too late to save them.  The fishermen had evidently tried to bargain for their lives, but the Norse had been unable to understand and so had simply killed them out of hand, set fire to their vessel, and continued on their way.  Their rations were getting low, and the men restless.  Uthred knew that they would need to make landfall soon.

---

Sakuma Kichiro had ascended his father as daimyo of their ancestral estate following his death at the hands of an assassin.  Kichiro had managed to single out seven suspects, but none of them had confessed.  Frustrated, Kichiro had had them all killed, publicly, as payback for his father's death. His new katana was a three-body sword, which he had happily tested on four of his prisoners.  One of his retainers had finished off the fourth man, who had been cut only halfway through his body rather than all the way.

But peace hadn't been easy to come by for the young daimyo.  Several fisher-folk and some merchants in his service had reported harassments to him from strange folk from over the sea, and as their liege he was honour-bound to discover the source of this aggression.  Personally, he suspected some wokou pirates, as they had provided him with trouble in the past.  It would be a joy to hunt them down and eradicate the menace - and if there was nothing after all, just peasant's mumblings, then he would take retribution on the fools upon his return.

These were the thoughts going through his head as he and two-score of his loyal samurai sailed into a fog bank, a few hundred yards away from a small, uninhabited island that he had explored once when he was younger.

Then they found the fishing boat.  It was a small, low-drafted vessel washed in blood and lit aflame.  Kichiro's jaw unwillingly dropped as he saw the bodies.  No wokou he had ever seen would do something like this.  The small boat's crew of fishermen had been slaughtered, with body parts hanging over the sides of the flaming boat and one man hanging upside-down from the mast with his head missing.

Then they heard the war-horns sounding, and the battle was begun.

---

Uthred blasted once more on his war-horn, the old gold-gilded instrument ringing in the fog of the evening over the grey water.  One of his far-sighted men, Rypiere, had spotted the foreign war-ship earlier in the day and the sea-wolves had shadowed it ever since, careful to stick near to the fog-bank.  So they'd gotten into good position and the six or seven serfs aboard the Sea-Eagle with their self bows had loosed arrows at his command.  Their weapons were built of single pieces of wood, and were rudely crafted, so they had little power to them.  The Sea-Eagle was closer to its prey than Uthred would normally have cared for, but they had no choice if he wanted the first blow to be struck to be his own.

The Sea-Eagle soared over the waves, powered dually by the wind in her sails and the rushing oars on either flank, lagging only a little behind the darts that had been shot forth before her.  He watched with mixed satisfaction as several men were hit in the back and legs, knowing full-well that his men had been aiming for their necks and faces.

Then he had to duck down behind one of the shields lining the sides of the Sea-Eagle as the enemy returned fire.  The enemy leader’s archers were obviously more skilled than his own, and their weapons were of better construction as two of his serfs and three of his huscarls were hit by incoming arrows.

"Get behind your damn shields," Uthred roared.  "Clapa, ready that chain.  We're almost upon them."

And then they were.  Clapa, one of his strongest huscarls, stood and threw the grappling-hook across the gap to latch onto the near side of the opposing vessel.

Uthred followed it over, a group of picked-men following him across.  One of them, a liar and thief named Haesten, leapt too soon over the breach and came up short to be dragged underwater by the weight of his armour without a sound.

Uthred had his longsword, which he had named Serpent-Breath, out and his first stroke with it was an overhanded slash into the unprotected back of one of the unarmoured men servicing the ship.  Back split open and bleeding out like a melon, he collapsed as Uthred drew his sword out of the new corpse.  His huscarls fanned out, creating a small shieldwall to fight from behind.

And they needed to, for then the armoured men inside of the ship counter-attacked them.  Many of them had polearms; the rest had sword.  Those men with bows stowed them away, but not before Uthred saw what they were; tall war-bows, taller than the men that bore them, made of polished bamboo.  Interesting, he thought this.

Then a man began to shout at him and stab a spear at his legs beneath his shield, further out than he could reach with Serpent-Breath.  Fortunately he was able to go without harm from it thanks to the bands of steel he wore around his legs.

Uthred shouted aloud for Clapa to come up to the front with his Danish ax, a two-handed weapon with a stave as long as a man's leg, and for him to bring a spear.  Sheathing Serpent-Breath, he took the spear and allowed Clapa to stand before him with his ax.  More men were crossing over or stabbing out with their spears from the Sea-Eagle.

Clapa felled one man with his great ax, crushing through his shoulder-plates and destroying his chest, but then he struck at a warrior with a strange helmet on his head and as he tried to smash him his blow was struck away by the angled sides of it and the man stuck his spear into Clapa's stomach.  It pierced the maille and the gambeson, a thick, quilted shirt made to defeat arrows, and continued into his gut.  Clapa readjusted his ax, roared a challenged mixed with pain, and destroyed the spear.  Several of the near-by enemy soldiers saw this happen and stood back, fearing the warrior who would not die.

Then Sakuma Kichiro loosed an arrow from his yumi, which soared true and straight into Clapa's eye.  He fell to the bloody deck with the spear still in his stomach.

"Back," Uthred shouted, with his spear with blood running down its shaft still in hand.  "We're taking too many losses here, we can't make a proper shield-wall.  Back across to the Sea-Eagle!"  His huscarls that had crossed over then leapt back to their own ship, the stiff resistance on the enemy war-ship having repulsed them.  They couldn't defeat it, not with their few numbers.  The few wounded warriors who could not go back themselves tried to fight from were they lay, but were slaughtered with arrows and spears.

"Cut that chain, before they follow us across," Uthred instructed to Rypiere, one of his servants.  But he was saved the trouble by one of the opposing warriors, a huge man wielded a studded club of solid iron, destroyed the grappling-hook and the chain fell slack into the grey waters of the sea.  The two ships quickly drifted apart; a few lackluster arrows soared between the two vehicles, but no more casualties were had to either side.

Uthred simply sniffed at this, then turned to Ralla at the rear of the ship.  "We've got to get to land if we are going to defeat them," he said.  "We don't have room to form a proper shieldwall on that boat, and we can't fight them at any kind of distance.  Land is our only hope."  He wasn't even considering running away, simply making a tactical retreat to finish the fight on ground more amiable to their interests.

"Make it so."

---

Kichiro beckoned to the bodies of his enemies draped across his ship.  "Throw them overboard."

"You do not want to save the heads, daimyo?"  The warrior that asked was named Fujita, and his chosen weapon of war was the great kanabo club.  He had just used it to destroy the chain connecting the two war-ships, to free their vessel and begin a pursuit.

Kichiro scowled and passed his yumi away to one of his retainers.  "No.  These men are pirates, not true warriors.  From the sea they have come, and to the sea they will return."  He took a naginata from the same young samurai, whose name escaped him.

He then shouted orders to his men to pursue the swiftly-fleeing warship.  They were headed for the island.

---

They found the Norse vessel a few hours later, not long before sundown.  It was laid up on a creekside, sails flapping idly in the wind and abandoned.

Kichiro peered at it through the mist from atop his warhorse, yumi ready with an arrow on the string, trying to discern what had happened here.  Why would they leave their own warship unattended?  What were they planning?

His own ship was unsuited to sailing up rivers, unlike the low-hung vessel of the strangers.  It was a clever invention, that.  As such he and his men had had to disembark their own ship back at the coast, and trek across the small island through marshes and lightly-forested hills.  Their armour and horses were splattered with mud and slime, but no matter; both would be cleaned later, not just of mud but also of blood.

"No matter," Kichiro said to one of his servants that had come with them.  "Take some brands and burn that ship."  The few servants that had accompanied them to land went off to do so while the warriors spread out to clean the muck from their weapons and armour.  Kichiro idly flicked the reins of his horse and then realized that this was a trap.

Then the Norse made their move.

A volley of thrown spears and smaller javelins crashed into the group of samurai, killing some and scattering the others.  The warriors themselves followed their missiles into melee combat, swords and axes drawn with their great shields presented like a walking wall.

Kichiro shouted orders to his warriors, drawing his katana as he did it.  The last of the enemy raiders had left their hiding-place, a thick group of low-hanging trees at the foot of the opposite riverbank.

The leading warrior turned towards him, a tall man with grim features and a wolf's head set upon his shield.  Gathering a knot of his fellow horsemen to him, Kichiro assaulted the wedge and the viking leader.

---

The first blow upon his shield rocked Uthred's arm, sending a shocks of sensation up and down his spine to the soles of his feet and the roots of his teeth.  Gritting the latter and lifting one of the former, he dodged the second strike of his massive enemy, a man near to his own size wielding a huge club studded with iron.

Uthred stepped around the man's next swing, and smiled cruelly.  The fool had overlunged with the attempt, and left his flank open.  He would pay dearly with the mistake - with his life, if Uthred had his way with it.  He stabbed in, once, with Serpent-Breath - sliding the blade into the unarmoured gap between the man's neck and collarbone.  It reappeared out of the other side, the tip bloodied, and the man fell to his knees.  Withdrawing his sword, Uthred swung his shield around at an angle to the man's temple; the iron rim caught it at the apex of its flight, and broke his skull like an egg.  The body tumbled over, broken.

Then another man, possibly their leader judging by his ornate armour, loosed an arrow at Uthred's face.  Uthred attempted to catch it on the angle of his shield-rim, but missed and was saved by chance:  the dart slid across the brim of his helmet to deflect somewhere behind him. 

Dodging the attack of another horseman and his spear, Uthred picked up a Norse skeg ax from the ground.  He was able to redirect another arrow from his counterpart among the enemy, this time off of his shield rather than his skull, and then engaged the man directly.  Uthred hooked the long beard of his weapon into the belts and trappings around the man’s waist, and then pulled him down from the saddle.

He struck out with his shield, angling it to present as much of its surface as possible between himself and the daimyo, then lunged forward with the newfound ax, hoping to gut the man like a fish.  He made contact, but his enemy's armour withstood the assault.  He withdrew without thinking, hunching his shoulders up over his neck to protect it from a would-be cut to his neck.

Leaping ably to his feet, the daimyo took the offensive, striking often with slashes at Uthred's neck, face and legs.  Uthred was hard-pressed to defend himself adequately, trusting to his shield more often than he would normally wish.  The samurai disarmed him, striking the ax from his hand.  Uthred backed away and took Serpent-Breath from its place on his belt.

The battle swirled around them.  Men fought and died.  But neither fled - these were trained, professional killers, deadly efficient in the use of their weapons.  At the center of it were their lords, whom they would never abandon in the heat of combat.  The chaos had moved to the thick marsh-land, now, boots squelching in the mud.  Then Sakuma Kichiro made his mistake.

He stepped too far back from the viking, hoping to make him overstretch in an attempt at hitting him, but his feint failed.  Instead, he had stepped into a depression in the ground filled with water, and he fell, sinking up to the knee.

Constricted by this, he had no chance to do anything other than attempting a futile defense as the viking defeated the samurai.

---

Uthred turned away from his slain foe.  He had been a talented, deadly, if young fighter - good that he had fallen before he could cause more trouble for the raiders.  His own huscarls had broken the enemy, and the former retainers - now all ronin - were fleeing back to their ship as Norsemen blew their war-horns in pursuit of them or dying with honor around the body of their lord.  He would call the sea-wolves off soon, to loot the bodies, bury their own dead, and soon set sail.

Uthred of Bebbanburg was anxious to find the land that this man had ruled.  It had no ruler, now - and therefore no protector.  This may prove to be the most profitable venture of his life.

The Conclusion.

Norse War-Lord
-Offensive Assessment:  thirty-four (34) of forty (40) possible points.

~Close-Quarters Combat; three (3) of five (5) possible points.

~Weapons of Reach; ten (10) of ten (10) possible points.

~Long-Distance Fighting; sixteen (16) of twenty (20) possible points.

~Specialized Weapons; five (5) of five (5) possible points.
-Defensive Assessment:  thirty-five (35) of forty (40) possible points.

~Head; seventeen (17) of twenty (20) possible points.

~Torso; nine (9) of ten (10) possible points.

~Limbs; four (4) of five (5) possible points.

~Blocking; five (5) of five (5) possible points.
-Variables Assessment:  thirteen (13) of twenty (20) possible points.

~Tactics; three (3) of five (5) possible points.

~Training; three (3) of five (5) possible points.

~Morale; two (2) of five (5) possible points.

~Innovation; five (5) of five (5) possible points.
~Total Composite Assessment:  eighty-two (82) of one hundred (100) possible points.

Samurai Daimyo
-Offensive Assessment:  thirty-five (35) of forty (40) possible points.

~Close-Quarters Combat; three (3) of five (5) possible points.

~Weapons of Reach; nine (9) of ten (10) points.

~Long-Distance Fighting; nineteen (19) of twenty (20) possible points.

~Specialized Weapons; four (4) of five (5) possible points.
-Defensive Assessment:  thirty-one (31) of forty (40) possible points.

~Head; seventeen (17) of twenty (20) possible points.

~Torso; eight (8) of ten (10) possible points.

~Limbs; three (3) of five (5) possible points.

~Mobile; three (3) of five (5) possible points.
-Variables Assessment:  fifteen (15) of twenty (20) possible points.

~Tactics; two (2) of five (5) possible points.

~Training; five (5) of five (5) possible points.

~Morale; four (4) of five (5) possible points.

~Innovation; four (4) of five (5) possible points.
~Total Composite Assessment:  eighty-one (81) of one hundred (100) possible points.

Winner:  The Norse Warlord!  And there you have it!  The Norse bring home the gold by the closest of margins - one single point.  Both of these cultures are incredibly dangerous combatants; which is a fitting parallel to their influence on the development of human history and global culture.  As can be seen directly above, both of these warrior-cultures were neck-and-neck for much of the assessment; it appears that the Nordic roundshield is what won them the day after all.  Much respect for both cultures!